Offering II

A country that will not cry for the dead.
A country that deemed their grave an infamy and effaced it.
A country that refused the right to live.
To control the tears, mouths shut.
We are pleading with our hands for freedom
at least to shed tears.

Offering III

We demanded our rights in the way of Gandhi, yet we were abandoned.
We rebelled against the Black July riots, yet we were forsaken by the world.
What is remaining at the expense of lost lives
are these hands.

Offering V

How to chase a woman, strip her and kill her?
How to aim at a small child with a gun?
How to dance on the chest of the dead?
How to spit on the face of the Tamils left behind?
O World, don't forget to learn these from our motherland Sri Lanka.

Offering VI

We don't need a motherland to live.
To call the names of those,
To drench in the memories of those
who died fighting for our land.
Both these hands will always join together asking
give us freedom.

Poems by an anonymous survivor, translations by Cheran Rudhramoorthy